


If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur

by AteanaLenn



Series: Steter(ish) shorts [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (sort of too), (sort of), Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Crack Treated Seriously, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Magic and Science, Self-Indulgent, Stiles is Derek's generation, Stiles is Legal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AteanaLenn/pseuds/AteanaLenn
Summary: For thesarcasm prompt: "If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur."Stiles is determined, Peter is smitten and long-suffering, and Derek is the cutest nerd. Also, there are dodos.Stiles gestured at everything and nothing, almost upsetting a jar in the movement. “You know. Magic, potential kablooey ritual, ancient seat of power, weirdly sentient tree. Something’s bound to happen; I vote for time travel. Or time jump. Time being screwed with in some way. I want a dinosaur,” Stiles declared with force, staring seriously at Peter.





	If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing non-stop for the coming [Steter Week 2018](https://steterweek.tumblr.com/post/174835604073/steter-week-2018-themes) but I got frustrated of having all those words and none published, so I took a break and wrote this fluffy nonsense for fun :D  
> -

“If history repeats itself, I am so getting a dinosaur.” 

“I- … What?” Peter paused in the process of applying the last touch to the ritual surrounding the Nemeton. “And… why would history repeat itself?”

Stiles gestured at everything and nothing, almost upsetting a jar in the movement. “You know. Magic, potential kablooey ritual, ancient seat of power, weirdly sentient tree. Something’s bound to happen; I vote for time travel. Or time jump. Time being screwed with in some way.  _ I want a dinosaur _ ,” Stiles declared with force, staring seriously at Peter.

Peter stared back for a long moment. 

Silence stretched between the two, until the tree pointedly cracked between them.

Only one answer would keep Peter in blowjobs, so…

“Of course, Stiles,” Peter answered smoothly.  

“Nice,” Stiles murmured, looking back down at the tree.

Peter rolled his eyes, even though he couldn’t keep a smile off his face, and went back to his work.

/

“That wasn’t  _ quite _ what I meant by ‘dinosaur’,” Stiles said, staring with wild eyes. 

Peter pinched the skin of his forearm. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Stiles…”

“I’m innocent!”

“Stiles!”

“No, but really, I didn’t do anything.”

“Stiles, the clearing is  _ overrun with dodos _ !”

“Wasn’t me!”

“Oh my god.” Peter took a deep breath, then looked up again. Nope, still surrounded by  _ dodos _ .

“I promise you, I didn’t!” Stiles looked around a moment, then muttered under his breath, looking rather wistful, “I wouldn’t know how to do something like that.”

“No.”

“ ‘No’ what?”

“No dinosaurs, Stiles. Really.” 

“But I told you that I didn’t do anything!”

“Oh, I know. This goddamn tree is just too much of an overeager puppy, trying his best to get your attention and approval. I’m talking about the idea currently percolating in your mind.  _ I know _ that you’re planning how you could make more of them.”

“I wouldn’t-”

“Yes, you would.”

“Okay, yeah, I would.  _ Dinosaurs _ , Peter, dinosaurs!”

“No, Stiles.”

“You are absolutely no fun. I bet Derek would want dinosaurs, too.”

“Derek is the biggest nerd to ever nerd. If he’ been with us, he’d have been on his knees, buried under the dodos, unable to decide between petting them and writing down notes for posterity, before we even understood what we were seeing here.”

They stood in silence a few minutes, pensively contemplating the birds.

“Yeah, okay, Derek totally would.”

“I know. That is why you are not going to tell him that you can make dinosaurs.”

“Well, I can’t?”

“I know you, Stiles. You aren’t going to rest until you find how the Nemeton did it, and then you’re going to work yourself to exhaustion, until you make it too. And the damn tree will be there every step of the way, cheering you on and giving you tips, because  _ it’s your biggest fan _ .”

Stiles preened.

He also absolutely didn’t contradict the other man.

“So I’m putting my foot down right now.  _ No. Dinosaurs _ . With our luck, you’d unleash Jurassic Park on us without even meaning to.”

Stiles did  _ not _ contradict him about this either.

“Does that mean we have to kill the dodos?” Stiles asked, worrying his bottom lip.

Peter stalled, then grimaced. “I… can’t. Dammit, this is _ your fault too _ .”

“What?” Stiles squawked. “How would that be my fault?!”

“I’ve known you for  _ years _ , Stiles, since you followed Derek home from high school, so excited to get to see my nerd of a nephew’s animals collection books. Remind me again how many times I’ve been stuck between Derek and you, watching National Geographic and Attenborough’s documentaries?”

“So what? Documentaries are the best thing! What, you’d rather be watching  _ Fox News _ maybe?”

“No. I don’t mind the documentaries. I’m pretty sure that you’ve conditioned me to like them. But we’ve watched the documentary about the extinction of dodos and the terrible conditions in which their remains were treated so many times,  _ I feel bad just at the idea of killing them _ .”

“Serves you right,” Stiles retorts without looking up. He’s moved from the limit of the clearing, sitting on his knees next to a dodo and petting it. The bird kept munching on some grass or root or something, indifferent. “Can you believe the big bad wolf was talking about killing an extinct bird, a big ball of  _ fluff _ like you!”

“Kweh,” the bird answered, then trotted away. It butted head with another dodo who ‘kweh’-ed back, then they started sharing the same tuft of plants.

Stiles looked up at Peter and said, looking grave, “I want one.”

“No.”

/

“How do you think the Nemeton managed to get them here anyway?” Stiles asked. 

He was herding the beast back a bit, away from the fence that Peter was sticking deeply into the ground around the clearing. They couldn’t exactly let the birds frolic all over the place and potentially stumble on some random hikers. These birds had been made too much of an example by scientists, to warn of the dangers of extinctions, without even mentioning the kid movies. Everyone knew what a dodo looked like and that they were supposed to be extinct.

At least, the Nemeton repulsed all sentient beings it didn’t want near. The birds would be safe around it, especially as they weren’t even sure how they would fare, away from the magical tree which had brought them to life in the first place.

“Magic?”

“Yes, but, I mean, magic doesn’t create from nothing? I know it ’s not quite the Alchemy's Law of Equivalent Exchange, but almost. Unless you’ve got a shit ton of power to throw around and a focus the size of the Empire State Building, you can’t actually create  _ that many _ things from nothing.”

Peter glared down at a wandering dodo, before gently pushing it toward the middle of the clearing with his foot. I changed trajectory without pausing in its steps.

“Then what do you think? It’s not like the Nemeton could make a ritual circle by itself.”

There was a telling silence from Stiles’ corner of the wood.

Peter closed his eyes slowing, then took a deep breath. Then a second.

“Stiiiles?”

“It’s not my fault!”

“Stiles!”

“I just… saw some roots on the ground? Like, really suspiciously placed roots. Like, what-a-nice-ritual-circle placed roots.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it?”

“I’m just doing it! I noticed barely five minutes ago.”

Peter laughed. “By ‘five minutes ago’, I guess you mean ‘when I faceplanted on the ground and got swarmed by playful birds’.”

“Eff you,” Stiles spit out with a playful sneer. “But yes,” he rolled his eyes as Peter kept snickering, “I noticed when I got up close and personal with the forest floor. There are a whole lot of large roots out of the ground, I thought it was weird but, well…” He shrugged. “And then I noticed some of it was nicely round, and also nicely parallel. So, yeah. I’m pretty sure that the Nemeton has grown its own roots out and made them follow the circle you did a couple of weeks ago, for our regular purifying ritual.”

“Of course it did.” Peter closed his eyes again and sighed. “Well, as long as it keeps the madness contained inside the clearing, I guess we’ll be okay.”

“That doesn’t explain  _ how _ ,” Stiles repeated. “I mean, magical circle or not, it needs ‘ingredients’, elements to start the creation-slash-reaction.”

Peter stared down pensively at the birds.

“You have an idea,” Stiles said.

“Maybe?”

Stiles jumped to his feet, hopping over the birds to reach his boyfriend. “What is it?!”

“Well. Supposedly, there are remains left in the ground still, you know, from that scientist who found whole skeletons back at the very beginning of the 20th Century, but got ignored. That documentary we re-watched last week did mention that researchers never did manage to find the site where Thirioux had unearthed his new skeletons, right. And there were those marshes too, where they found many various bones?”

“The… the- oh dammit, I know it! The  _ Mare aux Songes _ !”

“Your French accent is terrible.”

“Meh.”

“By which I mean we’ll be working on your French classes, when we get home.”

“You suck.”

“That I do,” Peter waggled his eyebrows.

Stiles snorted, then shook his head. “So what, you think the Nemeton is… pulling? teleporting? the bones from all the way there?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. It’s not like we have another idea.”

“No, I don’t either, unless it’s been making ‘clay’ birds from the mud and then breathing life in them. Who the hell knows. It’s not like it’s going to  _ tell _ us.”

They both turned and stared at the tree.

It sat silently and unmoving in the middle of the clearing.

“You know,” Stiles told it, “frozen-in-the-headlights, not-even-a-leaf-moving-in-the-breeze is  _ not _ an innocent look for a Nemeton.”

The tree rippled.

“Did it just shrug at you?”

“Yes?”

“Of course,” Peter said, rubbing a hand on his face.

/

“I  _ knew _ that there was something going on!” Derek suddenly called out from the forest.

Peter and Stiles whirled around as one.

“Derek!” They exclaimed out together.

“What are you doing here?” Stiles asked, hands spread to his side like he could hide the flock of birds spread out in the large pen that Peter had finished just a few days ago.

“You’ve been sneaking in the forest a lot, the two of you, I knew that there was something going on!”

“We always come up in the forest, the Alpha,  _ your mom _ , ordered us to care for the Nemeton.” Peter answered with a pointed stare.

“Yeah, but you’re usually hauling jars and disgusting stuff, and most of the time, a dead body or two, when you come to the Nemeton. And you don’t  _ sneak _ , since as you said, you’re just doing what mom ordered,” Derek says, marking his points with raised fingers.

Stiles flailed. “We just had… stuff, to do.”

“I see that.” Derek stared down at Stiles, eyebrows raised. “Wait, is that  _ a dodo _ ?!” Derek’s voice rose and his eyes grew round.

Peter raised his eyes to the sky. “Oh, hell.”

“How can you have  _ dodos _ ? Did you make them? Are they real?” Derek jumped on top of the fence, then caught himself as he was about to throw himself inside the pen. Instead, he slowly slid down and took a few gentle step forward.

The dodos milling around mostly ignored the man, except for the few who had already learned that pockets meant snacks.

Derek knelt down, surrounded by the birds, a large smile on his face.

“Dodos!” He repeated excitedly as he looked up at the other two. 

Stiles grinned back, joining on the ground. “Yes! We’ve got a few theories, but nothing concrete. All we know is that it’s the Nemeton’s doing.”

“Because Stiles said that he wanted dinosaurs,” Peter added.

“Oh, thank god it didn’t go for velociraptors.” Derek stared at the tree, eyes huge and round, mouth hanging open. He was hugging a dodo to his chest.

The bird let him, burrowing its head and beak under Derek’s chin.

“Well, at least we know that those aren’t true-flavored dodos,” Stiles mused, looking down at the way that Derek was already turning into the Dodos Whisperer.

“Why?”

“Because animals, especially prey animals, are  _ always _ wary of you guys. That dodo is  _ cuddling with you _ .”

“Yeah, it is,” Derek whispered, looking down at the bird with a large smile.

Stiles gave up and gave in, scooting forward some more so that he was in petting distance too. 

Peter rolled his eyes, as usual, but joined the boys on the ground, forming a small circle in which they herded a few more dodos.

They spent the next few hours petting the very willing birds, marveling over their wings, how warm their bodies were, how they all sat as close as possible, so that as many of them could be in petting distance of the humans.

The Nemeton squirmed in its bed, a few large roots rising above the ground, forming perfect-height backrests behind the men.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the article that I mostly used for ref: [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160408-how-humanity-first-killed-the-dodo-then-lost-it-as-well](https://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160408-how-humanity-first-killed-the-dodo-then-lost-it-as-well)
> 
> Please, leave a review on your way out, and thank you for reading!! :D ♥♥


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